


birds of a feather

by agentmaine



Category: Dimension 20 (Web Series)
Genre: Coming Out, Coming of Age, F/F, Fluff, LGBTQ Themes, M/M, Mentions of homophobia, all canon typical stuff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-18
Updated: 2020-07-03
Packaged: 2021-03-03 22:14:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 20,496
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24792940
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/agentmaine/pseuds/agentmaine
Summary: birds of a feather flock together, or, more specifically: gay kids somehow know and find other LGBT kids to be friends with, even before any of them know they're LGBT.this is my take on the 6 bad kids and their 6 journeys with their sexualities - because no two coming out journeys are the same.
Relationships: Ayda Aguefort/Figueroth Faeth, Kristen Applebees/Tracker O'Shaughnessey, Ragh Barkrock/Gorgug Thistlespring, Ragh Barkrock/Zelda Donovan/Gorgug Thistlespring, Riz Gukgak/Fabian Aramais Seacaster, Zelda Donovan/Gorgug Thistlespring
Comments: 57
Kudos: 335





	1. kristen applbees.

Kristen Applebees does not think about girls for the first fifteen years of her life.

Or, well, she  _ does _ . But she tries not to. Tries so, so hard not to.

When the Applebees family go to the diner just on the edge of town for their monthly family brunch, with her parents sat on one side of the bright red booth with Bucky, and Kristen on the other sandwiched between the squirming and hyperactive Bricker and Cork, Kristen most certainly does  _ not  _ think about the pretty waitress that called her  _ darlin’  _ in a drawling accent so smooth you could crawl into it. No, she doesn’t think about the way the waitress winked at her when she watched her settle her brothers into something approaching indoor voices and said  _ keep up the good work. _

She says grace to Helio, thinks about her god and her pancakes and nothing else.

When they go to the boy’s sports game, she only thinks of the game of Junior Bloodrush and how well her brothers are doing, not of the coach with the long, blonde hair, broad shoulders and strong arms and a commanding voice that Kristen thinks would make her listen more attently than any preacher in Helio’s church ever could. She doesn’t think she’s beautiful. She doesn’t think about how it must feel when the coach goes over to who must be her wife - her brother’s art teacher, Kristen hears her mother whisper in horror - and gives her a quick kiss on the lips, smiling so sweet it makes her feel sick with something that isn’t allowed to be longing. When her Father tells her to look away, she does. She doesn’t ache to look back at them, in their bubble of joy or maybe sin or maybe both.

Kristen is devout - her god is wonderful, resplendent, everything she needs. Holy. Pure. Healing. She is His prophet, chosen from birth. Her path is laid out in front of her in corn-coloured stone, clear and right and absolute. She’s been told that her entire life, that the path is the safest way to go, that to stray leads to temptation, sin and damnation. Each step that she takes is predetermined, safe, comfortable. 

Or, well, not  _ comfortable _ , Kristen recognises, but that’s how everyone feels, isn’t it? Life shouldn’t be  _ comfortable _ , life being hard is  _ normal _ , wearing your destiny like a coat that doesn’t fit right is just part of the process. Of course it is. Her parents tell her that comfort is a lie, and she believes them. Her struggle is holy. Of course it is.

If it were anything else, then it wouldn’t be worth it.

When Kristen goes to Aguefort as part of her journey, she follows her set path. It’s her job, her duty. Kristen has learned that she doesn’t need agency to be a follower. In the four walls of her childhood home, Kristen has learned time and time again that to follow is to serve is to love. And serving is what she should be doing - spreading the word of her Helio, loving Him, bathing in the glory that he affords her and being grateful for it, no matter what strife may come in her way.

But then she actually  _ goes  _ to Aguefort. She does what feels right, nestles her way into a group of bad kids, those who’ve fought and stolen and lied on their very first day, the worst sort of people to be around with nothing but optimism in her heart and the best impression to make upon them. She steels her nerves and expects what her parents taught her that she would find: vagabonds, sinners, misguided souls to be steered onto her path or left behind. No looking back.

What Kristen finds, though, is the start of a complicated journey: she finds people just like her. Stupid in their jokes, proud in nature, accepting and open and warm. Teenagers, in all that there is. Fighting like it means everything only for it to be forgotten the moment after. Finding solidarity amongst each other in that detention room within minutes, friendships easily formed through the power of not a good but shared space. And in the moments Kristen spends in the detention room, stuffy and loud and chaotic, the first seed of doubt is planted.

That seed grows into a forest when, in the next hour, she dies, meets God, realises he’s a dick, and is brought back to life through her new headteacher after sneaking the man into heaven moments after he had concluded blowing his brains out onto the linoleum floor already slick blood and, of course,  _ corn. _

It’s not your average first day of school.

From then on, doubt grows, as it always does. Doubt and curiosity, what were previously the sins Kristen would fear in the shadows, grow into friends, familiar, ever-present, popping up everywhere in the cracks of her life, like weeds she doesn’t want to get rid of. Questions form in her mind and for the first time in her life, escape her mind and pass the tip of her tongue, breaking into the world, not quelled but  _ encouraged  _ by the disapproving looks from her parents, her pastors, the remnants of the life she once believed in so blindly. She clings to it, for a while, in a liminal space between the old and the new, like being attached to the zipwire and about to jump,  _ wanting to _ , but your body gluing you to the floor you know, scared of the vast’s embrace.

And then, Tracker.

Fifteen years of  _ not  _ thinking about girls doesn’t prepare you for meeting someone with eyes like Tracker’s, Kristen thinks, as they sit in a club that they shouldn’t be in, knowing with a surefire certainty resting in the pit of her stomach - a rare feeling, these days - that things are about to break bad. They will do, they always do, the Bad Kids attract Bad Things, but Kristen is struggling even to put one word after another, let alone think about combat strategy. Tracker is taller than her, by about an inch. Broader and stronger. Her hair is short, styled in a way that Kristen would never be allowed to have it, and couldn’t dream of pulling off half as well. Her eyes are nothing short of hypnotic and Kristen has never found a floor more interesting, apparently, because this is everything she’s been told to avoid.

It’s the fire she can’t walk into, full of smoke that would seep into her lungs like a disease, choke her out.

It’s the pool she wants to dive-bomb into headfirst, because maybe she’s been on fire this whole time, and never noticed it. Maybe she was just used to the burning.

And when Tracker kisses her, it’s the best and worst thing to ever happen in her whole entire life, wrapped up into one and tied with a bow, and she doesn’t stop thinking about it for a very long time.

Kristen’s realisation is not introspective or quiet - it’s her new friends, her best friends, her family, watching her stumble along through the dark, offering her a flashlight that she just can’t take. It is staying up until 4am texting Tracker once she gets her number, unable to look away from her crystal’s screen for even a moment, and  _ this  _ is what devotion is,  _ this  _ is what it feels like to want to commit yourself to something. This feels holier, more pure, more right than anything on the corn-covered path she was put on, forced down, barricaded into. 

The first time she says she’s gay, aloud, she’s drunk and everyone responds with an echoing, pitying, supportive “ _ we know _ ”, Fabian chuckling at her and Adaine rolling her eyes, Fig hardly holding back a snarky commont and Gorgug flashing her a warning look as Riz shakes his head. The response hurts, for a moment, stinging deep in a wound she didn’t know she had, because  _ she knows they know, but it’s hard _ . She doesn’t say anything. Doesn’t have the words drunk and might not have found them sober, either, but it hurts quietly. 

But this is so confusing because, somehow, at the same time, their dismissive response is the best thing anyone has ever said to her  _ \- they know, and they don’t care _ . They love her, regardless. They know, and it’s not a big deal. 

They know and they love her but they didn’t react right but they did but it’s still so much and nothing at all and, and, and… it’s all  _ complicated _ , a tangled string of emotion she can’t tug at to untie without wrapping it further in and around itself.

It’s too much for one night, so she tells Tracker the next week, sat on the floor of her bedroom, in Jawbone’s apartment, because of _ course  _ everyone in Elmville has to be connected one way or another.

“I told my friends I’m gay.” Kristen blurts it in the middle of a completely unrelated conversation that she’s only half ashamed to admit she wasn’t paying proper attention to, something about the gods and theory and, well, something or other.

“Oh!” Tracker blinks, once, twice, breaks into a smile. Reaches out and takes Kristen’s hand in her own, without a second thought. Kristen watches in awe at that, the thoughtless confidence in touching another girl. A life free of sin, she thinks. Or a life free of the burden of it, because she’s not quite sure  _ sin  _ ever existed in the first place. “That’s great, Kristen. Being a lesbian is cool as fuck, there’s no two ways about that.”

Another long pause comes. A lesbian.

Kristen had never thought about being a  _ lesbian _ .

“This is gonna sound stupid.” And her mouth is moving for her, words slipping out without thought around Tracker. It’s her goddamn eyes, and her presence, cool and calm and protective and something she doesn’t have the words for, something easy in a way that Kristen didn’t know things could be, didn’t know things were  _ allowed  _ to be. “But. Does it have to be  _ lesbian _ ? That, just. Fuck, I don’t know, Tracker. It just sounds like a  _ lot _ .”

Tracker cocks an eyebrow. Not judgemental, but questioning. She looks at Kristen with a sturdy resolve, and it feels like it burns. At the same time, she moves her hand to interlock with Kristen’s own, the touch sending shockwaves of electricity reverberating through her body so strong that if Kristen didn’t trust the girl in front of her implicitly, she’d think she was being attacked. She squeezes Tracker’s hand tighter. Each touch is a quiet act of defiance against someone who will never see it, and Kristen is terrified of it. It’s her favourite fear in the world.

“Kristen, babe,” and if she hadn’t died already, she’d be sure that this is what death feels like. Tracker continues, “if you’re calling yourself gay, I’m guessing that means you’re only attracted to women, right?”

Saying yes feels like too much, so Kristen nods. Tracker gets it, it seems, innately as always. She shuffles closer and they sit cross legged, facing each other, knees touching. The floor is so uncomfortable but if anyone tried to move her, she thinks she’d fight till her last breath to keep this steady press of contact. Tracker takes Kristen’s other hand, too, then. It reminds Kristen of holding hands in prayer, a circle of fifty people with hands joined in devotion to a god that she knows doesn’t care about them enough, doesn’t care about anyone or anything. Kristen thinks she knows what it feels like to be cared for, now.

“If you only like women, it seems like you’re a lesbian.” She smiles, soft and sweet and Kristen is reminded of the woman in the diner who gave her butterflies, her little brother’s football coach, the art teacher who kissed her, the women on her TV that her father shunned, the news stories she’d read late at night hiding in her bathroom to avoid being caught, so many things all at once. “You’re  _ allowed  _ to be that, Kristen. It’s not a bad thing. It’s not a bad word.”

“Oh.” She shuffles closer, if that’s even possible. “Okay. I’ll try it, then. It just feels… I don’t know. Heavier? Is that stupid?”

“Not one bit. Lotsa people feel like that, and it sucks. But we’ll work through it.”

“We?” Phrased like a question, packed full of hope.

“Yes,  _ we _ , Kristen Applebees.” That same smile, and all Kristen wants is to get used to how this feels. She revels in the pangs of guilt, knowing that each time she feels it, she moves one step past it, walking along her own path, one of her  _ own  _ creation. Not a follower, but a leader, for maybe the first time in her life. She doesn’t know how, yet, to lead. But she can figure it out along the way. “I want to help you through this, if you’d let me.”

“I’d like that. Fuck, I think I might  _ need  _ that. Tracker, if you couldn’t tell - I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing.” She admits it with a laugh. A confessional, in a new light. “You seem to have, like. A grip. I don’t. I thought I did, and turns out? Not one fuckin’ clue. My  _ whole  _ life.”

“I know.” Sympathy, but not pity. Kristen likes that she likes that. “But you’re outta that place now, babe. You’ve got new friends. You’ve got me. I like you. You like me. You’re coming to our LGBT meetings. That’s  _ huge. _ ”

“I’m hiding in the bathroom at your LGBT meetings.”

Tracker scoffs, shaking her head fondly, smiling and squeezing Kristen’s hands again. “Baby steps. You’re fine.”

“Sure. Yeah, I’m fine.” Kristen copies, nodding to convince herself. She feels just a bit stronger just for doing so. “Yeah, no. Yeah. You’re right. I  _ am  _ fine. And I’m  _ a lesbian _ . And that’s  _ fine. _ ”

“Fuck yeah it is.” Tracker smiles brighter, wider, pointed teeth shining as bright as the light in her eyes and she looks so beautiful, in that moment, bathed in pride and joy that’s all so wonderfully selfless that Kristen leans in and kisses her, throwing herself into the deep end, off the cliff, down the zipline. When Tracker puts a hand on each side of Kristen’s face and kisses her back, Kristen can, for a moment, shed doubt aside.

Her old God is a dick. She’s died. Her parents are at least a bit evil. Every day she spends at Aguefort seems like another day that could put her life in danger. She’s lost her faith and is trying to find a new one, stumbling across the unforgiving lands of uncertainty with the knowledge that she  _ needs  _ her faith to keep herself alive, to keep her friends alive. She has felt lost amongst everything around her, now, for weeks.

But this? This, she’s sure of. This is a road straight home. 

It’s Tracker as a grounding presence in her life that helps Kristen Applebees escape her past, the looming presence of Helio and the doubt that festered in herself, threatening to drown her under its crashing waves. Kristen comes to believe that doubt is good. Eventually, Kristen finds her faith in it, becomes intimately familiar with the curves of confusion, the shape of mystery, the primal instinct to question everything. The path she viewed with rose-tinted glasses for so long is gone from under her feet, as is any  _ other  _ path she thought herself to be on. Kristen learns to love that there  _ is  _ no path, there’s just places to go. Kristen learns to get to them, in her own way, in her own time, with the randomness of the universe helping her, hindering her, making the journey worthwhile.

Cassandra is a question she loves to never know the answer to, and doubt is such a big part of Kristen’s life. But not  _ this _ .

She grows in confidence through the weeks, months, seasons, with Tracker at her side. From a drunken girl crying the sorrows of a cross she never asked to bear, Kristen becomes the loudest gay at the party (a title given to her by none other than Fabian). She is the first of the Bad Kids to come out and finds a path to pave for the others - not a religious one, not for her friends, she doubts she could convince any of them to spend even ten minutes a day pondering the philosophical properties of doubt - but a path of being  _ gay  _ and being  _ proud  _ of it _.  _ A rainbow road with her footsteps to follow and her hand to hold, when they need help getting to the next step.

Kristen Applebees,  _ i can’t kiss girls  _ Kristen Applebees, is one of the cofounders of Aguefort Academy’s GSA, with her girlfriend and Ragh at her side. She jokes that it’s like Tracker’s moonhaven for the younger kids of the school, but after a while, when the classroom is decorated with flags, protected by adults who truly do  _ care _ , curated not like crops (that would be a shitty comparison), but like a flower bed, blooming into something beautiful… the GSA means something. Maybe not to too many people. But to those who need it, it’s there. To those who need it, Kristen shares her story with, helps them, encourages them to take the steps they need to move towards safety, comfort, a new life. The faces in the classroom that feels like  _ hers _ range from freshmen to seniors, from strangers to the friends that she classes as family, and she welcomes them all equally with open arms, cups of tea and snacks to share.

The biggest change Kristen would say she finds, though, is love. Her first love, the one she’s determined to make her  _ only _ , her  _ first and last.  _ Maybe that’s ambitious, but she doesn’t care. Of  _ course _ she falls in love with Tracker.

Who wouldn’t, with eyes like hers?

Kristen rides the zipwire feeling of that second kiss all the way to the ground, and hits the ground running.

For 15 years of her life, Kristen Applebees did not think about girls. For 15 years of her life, Kristen Applebees was told that comfort is a lie. For the first time, Kristen changes that narrative. She thinks about girls  _ a lot _ . She thinks about  _ her  _ girl even more. She finds that comfort isn’t a lie, that it was always right there, two steps too far out of reach, hidden by what she was told to think and feel and pray.

Comfort is everywhere. Doubt is everywhere.  _ Life  _ is everywhere. These are three things Kristen Applebees learns in the 16th year of her life. Kristen learns that all you have to do is look for it, and it’ll come. It won’t come easy or kind or gentle, but it’ll come. And, without a shadow of a doubt, the feeling of falling down a zipwire, free and terrified and ecstatic, is better than wearing a title you never asked for.

On her 17th birthday, all of this is reaffirmed, and the choices she’s made in her life are shown to her in the flowers of the seeds she planted: she has a girlfriend, a family, a new home, a new personality, one sculpted by all she’s been through. She wakes up to a birthday breakfast delivered by hand from Tracker, dressed in one of Kristen’s old shirts, the bed still warm from her presence at her side through the prior night. The house itself is covered head-to-toe in rainbows, the lesbian flag plastered across the walls in illusions crafted by Adaine and Fig. There’s music blasting through the old, creaking walls and each hidden alleyway in the house has another surprise in it for her to find. Laughter echoes from every room, with every person who loves her there in full force, proud in their love and proud of  _ her _ .

Jawbone ruffles her hair and gives her a birthday badge as big as her head, along with a kiss on the forehead. Sandralynn gives her the option to move her room closer to Tracker’s, along with a half-joking warning not to push her luck. Fig and the Cig Figs give a private concert, Fabian goes over the budget for gifts by about a mile and Riz fulfills his promise of making an escape room for her. Gorgug and the Hangvan host a movie-night with somehow more rooms than were found even during their use of it in sophomore year. Bud Cubby delivers the most precious gift - a letter in secret from her brothers, and Sklonda Gukgak gives news that they’re getting closer to getting them out of that home with every single day that passes.

Kristen enters her 17th year of life as many things. A saint of a new god. A defender of Elmville (and maybe the world?) a few times over. The girlfriend of Tracker O'Shaughnessey. The co-founder of the GSA. She enters her 17th year of life thinking about girls with confidence.

Most importantly, she enters the 17th year of her life with pride.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> there is a solid section in this that is me projecting my exact experience of coming to terms with the label "lesbian" onto kristen applebees and sometimes, thats ok


	2. gorgug thistlespring.

When Gorgug kissed Ragh at prom, it was just another thing that happened in a day full of so many, many things. He was upset, the sort of chest-heaving crying you only do on your worst days, where it rattles your chest and twists your stomach into knots of nausea that roll not like waves but hit like punches. Dayne was gone, and that was their doing, and it had happened impressively quickly. In a blink of an eye, the whooshing, sparking sounds of magic, the slicing of metal and, well, a gun.

Some people don’t deserve the rounds of combat necessary for a redemption arc.

Ragh was different, though, a kid pulled into all this mess through blind devotion to someone who never once deserved it. Maybe that’s why Kristen nailed it on her first guess, the similarities between the two of them - although one to a jock and the other to a god. Either way, the plan borne out of desperation was co-inspired by Kristen yelling from the rafters of the gymnasium in a strained voice, “I think he’s gay!”

And, sure, she thought that a lot, about a lot of people, and often got it wrong. But Gorgug was on a losing streak on the are you my Dad? campaign and, really, what did they have to lose? Fig thought it was a good idea, which was maybe, actually, something of a bad sign considering her track record but when push comes to shove and a dragon might eat you, you have to do what you have to do.

So, Gorgug’s third kiss (after a drunk Kristen, and his sort-of-girlfriend’s dad) is with a kid crying about how unloveable he is, how he’ll never get better that the boy who abused his trust and confidence. It’s with a kid who was straddling the tightrope walk of acceptance and self-loathing, vulnerable and prone to be pushed in either direction. It’s with a kid who needed the gentle shove towards recovery, a spark lit by a gentle kiss on the lips at prom, of all things.

All in all, it was a nice enough kiss, too.

And then he moved on from it. He told Zelda, of course, after she was finished with Kalvaxus. He told her so many things first, of course, all that seemed more important, all that she’d missed, introduced her to his biological Dad, told her how much he missed her, invited her to dinner with his parents that very night. It’s unfortunately when he tries to kiss her for the first time that he remembers the other kiss of the day. He explains it bashfully, ashamed and embarrassed and feeling like a cheater, somehow, until Zelda just nods, smiles understandingly, knowingly, as if taking a mental note of something that Gorgug can’t quite pin down, and he’s about to ask her until she practically jumps up to kiss him, closing a foot’s height difference, and then he’s not thinking about much of anything at all.

It’s another few months until it’s mentioned again, in any detail. The Bad Kids never really focus on it, wrapped up in everything else in their worlds, and really, what’s one strategic kiss going to matter to them, when they can hardly focus on the most serious of topics for longer than half an hour? The best thing from it is that Ragh slots into their friend group with ease and acknowledges how much it meant to him, that moment, jokes that it’s true friendships kiss. They grow close as members of Owlbears and friends and it’s just how it is, a new normal, with a happier Ragh that brings Gorgug more and more joy each time he sees him. They become semi-inseparable, casually affectionate, hugs and high fives and chest bumps a part of almost every conversation.

It’s Zelda who approaches the subject first, in Gorgug’s cramped bedroom, curled up next to him while she knits. “Gorgug, what was it like for you, kissing Ragh?”

“Uh... It was a kiss? I don’t know. Like kissing you, but if you were tall and an orc and a guy and, like, all sharp angles and stuff, instead of little and softer.” He shrugs, looking altogether confused and concerned, the squinting of his dark eyes indicative of someone trying and failing to solve a puzzle.

“So, you’re not grossed out by it? You liked it?” She questions, not looking up from her needles. She doesn’t look mad, or sound mad, or seem mad. She seems like Zelda - sweetness personified, timid and quiet and introspective and wonderful. He gets distracted a moment by how great she is, shakes his head, moves back to the conversation at hand.

“I mean. I guess? I don’t see the big deal about kissing guys if you’re a guy.” He shrugs loosely.

“Would you kiss another guy? Or kiss Ragh again, specifically? If I weren’t your girlfriend? Or… I mean, even if I was, and I let you?”

His brows furrow as he does the mental gymnastics to try and find the right answer, words, as is often the case, not coming easy to him. “Is this a test?”

Zelda looks up then, puts her project down, smiles. Takes his hands into hers as she often does and gives them a squeeze, a reassuring reminder that Gorgug isn’t even one bit ashamed to admit relaxes him instantly. “No, dummy. I’m… okay. I’m asking, because I’ve made you something. It might be stupid, but I’m gonna give you it anyway.”

“Oh.” Gorgug says. Zelda rustles around in her little bag, pulls out one crocheted bracelet in pink, purple and blue and another in pink, yellow and blue. He blinks down at them, confused, but is already smiling. “These are cute, Zelda. But. Uh. What’s this got to do with kissing Ragh?”

“They’re pride flags, Gorgug. For you.” She drops them into his hand and he looks at them, half as if they were a UFO and half as if they’re jewels from the finest crown.

“Is it stupid if I ask why?”

“Because I think you like Ragh, too, Gorgug. And that’s okay.” She says it soft and gentle, not accusative, like Gorgug thought a conversation like this would go. He doesn’t know what he’s feeling. Maybe a bit overwhelmed. And she seems to get that, reaching up to peck a kiss against his lips, grounding and comforting and homely. “I might be wrong. It might be shitty of me to spring this on you. I’m sorry.”

“No! No, you don’t need to be sorry.” he shakes his head fast enough that his hair flops over his eyes and Zelda laughs, pushing it out of his way. “I didn’t realise I had a crush on him. Do I have a crush on him? But. Like. I like you.”

“You can like both of us, Gorgug. You’ve got the biggest heart I know.” She smiles, so full of love. “I think there’s room for both of us in there, if that’s how you feel.”

And it’s like those puzzles where you have to push the pieces about to make a picture, the final one sliding into place. With Zelda’s gentle guidance, Gorgug has his realisation, that maybe Ragh isn’t just another friend. He doesn’t hold Fabian’s hand casually. He doesn’t nap with Riz. He doesn’t lay in cuddle piles with Adaine and Kristen like he does with Ragh and Zelda. He doesn’t feel the same specific sense of comfort, so unique, the polar opposite of his rage, with anyone else but the two of them. It’s an oh moment in the most classic of ways. Has he been dating Ragh this whole time?

(He remembers, too, in that moment, the Thistlespring Guide To Sex being left open on the page of polyamory. He thought it was an accident.)

“Huh. I think I should talk to Ragh, maybe. And Jawbone.”

“And Jawbone,” Zelda echoes, smiling still, looking proud - not of herself, for “solving a puzzle,” but of Gorgug, for getting himself there, with just a bit of help along the way. She reaches up again, another gentle kiss. “If you end up dating Ragh, I’m saying that we go on a friend and shared boyfriend date, ASAP.”

“Okay.” Gorgug nodded, somewhat numbed by the realisation, but in a happy way. Soft and reverberating, newfound knowledge, a label that he hadn’t realised he was looking for. “Yeah. I think that sounds good. You know that doesn’t mean I like you any less, right?”

Zelda huffed a laugh, then, shifting and curling into his side, fitting there with ease, like a belonging. “I know, Gorgug. But it makes me like you more. I’m proud of you.”

He hugs her close, presses a kiss to the side of her head, like he always does. Because nothing between them has to change, he reminds himself. At one point the same evening, Zelda sneaks downstairs and takes the Thistlespring’s book from the table - Digby and Wilma spot her, of course. Look at her with not enough subtlty at all before scuttling away together, unable to hide the childlike excitement that parents can’t help but get, sometimes, watching the memories of their own young love unfurl before their eyes, a generation later. 

When Zelda brought the book back up, they read through it together, setting rules and boundaries after some solid advice via text from Jawbone, who sent along another seven or so links, just for safekeeping. Gorgug holds his girlfriend close to his side long after they’ve finished talking, and then they take a nap together, just like normal. He wears both bracelets - one on each wrist, because labels are still so new, and he’s finding the one that fits.

And, at the same time, Gorgug realises labels don’t really matter as much to him, compared to some of his other friends. He knows Zelda identifies as bisexual, and eventually settles in that basecamp, too - enjoys the matching colours of pride on their wrists when they hold hands. But his coming out feels like a subtle shift of a realisation, the leaves turning from green to red in autumn slowly but naturally, rather than a huge shift at once, a full day’s rain in one moment. He asks Zelda if that’s normal - she says of course it is, all of it is, everyone’s coming out is different.

And that helps him.

When Gorgug goes to talk to Ragh about it all, Zelda sends him off with a cheery good luck and a kiss on the cheek, and is the first to congratulate him when he texts her that they’re going to try a few dates. Ragh and Zelda meet up the next day at Basrar’s and talk about rules, lines, boundaries. Or, Gorgug finds out, they agree on that in five minutes and spend the next hour and a half chatting about life, becoming closer for it in just that short time, and soon enough, his boyfriend and his girlfriend are some of each other’s closest friends.

And nothing makes him happier.

After a month or so, the Thistlesprings host a meet the parents meal, having spent the weekend modifying their tree-house to make it more wheelchair accessible for Lydia. It’s as chaotic as Gorgug could have expected and even more embarrassing, with his parents not holding back on the baby photos for one minute. They invite Gorbag and Roz, too, of course, so it ends up being four sets of parents cooing over a not-so-tiny toddler. It goes well, though, Lydia providing insane stories of her adventures, the Donovan’s listening intently and chiming in with stories of parties wild beyond imagination, Gorgug’s parents and bio-parents listening intently. Gorgug sits with Zelda to his right and Ragh to his left, each holding a hand, and it feels right.

Big, messy, loud, chaotic. Shouting across the table, bumping into each other, more family than can be fit into one room with enough love to match. Really, he thinks, as he realises this is what life can be like for him - why would he want anything else?

Zelda was right - he has a heart big enough to fit two people in. Of course he does - he was raised by Digby and Wilma Thistlespring, the two most loving people in the world. He’s been loved his whole life, from the parents who gave him away in an act of both selflessness and self-preservation, to the parents who took him in despite the struggle it caused them and loved him without a hint of regret.

It’s only right that he gives all that love back into the world, and the love he gives to Zelda and Ragh seems like a brilliant place to start.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the day after i wrote this zac said he thinks gorgug is straight so this is my death of the author "gorgug is bi and has two hands" fic


	3. fabian aramais seacaster.

Fabian Aramais Seacaster has always been his father’s son. They didn’t know that, for the first few years of his life, when he was too little to know any of it himself, or anything at all, really. As soon as he realised, though, and found the words to let them know, he made damn sure they heard him loud and clear, announcing himself proudly to the world as the second man in command of Seacaster Manor just shy of his fifth birthday. The adjustments in his life were made quickly, the support unanimous, and from that day forward he was his father’s darling boy. Hallariel replaced his wardrobe overnight and Cathilda replaced it once over again, getting rid of the frankly obscene amount of formalwear stylized for little elven boys and replacing it with normal clothes, for her wonderful, normal boy, growing up with the world at his fingertips as she did the best to remove the silver spoon from his mouth.

That was Fabian’s first coming out, and that was his life from then on. He grew into a proud young man, the image of his mother’s beauty and his father’s proud masculinity: bold, brash, loud. Anyone who questioned his place among male classmates was cut down with harsh words, or, if necessary, a swiftly delivered punch to the face that was never once questioned or criticised. He was his father’s son, and that was that.

But the fact that he was his father’s child became the issue, eventually.

Any child of Bill Seacaster would have had a hard time avoiding his tsunami of influence. Fabian, especially, with his gentle core and desire to please going against that, struggled. Cathilda had tutted at him, shaking her head from when he was young, warning him in gentle tones to mind his manners, his attitude, his bravado. To let himself cry, to stop holding back those tears, that a scraped knee or a hurt feeling is worthy of tears in the moment, no matter how quickly the wound scabs over and stops stinging. This was not an issue of gender, but of parenting and of personality, in a way. Cathilda watched as Bill’s darling boy, her own, too, grew up in a shadow of a man he admired beyond words, a man of legacy and legend, of tall tales of tall ships and of fierce protectiveness and a dream to be remembered.

Cathilda watched, helpless, as a young Fabian Aramais Seacaster’s dreams and aspirations were shaped in the mould of another person. She watched, after Bill Seacaster’s death, how the hole he left in Fabian’s life festered and stung, a wound wide open, and watched as Fabian, in mourning, tried desperately to fill the space that Bill had occupied in the world. Pulling his father apart and weaving the pieces into his own personality led Fabian down a road of fake confidence shielding a sensitive boy full of love, someone who buys gifts for his friends not for praise but for the smiles on their faces.

It was this, the idea that he had to be his father’s mirror image to still be his darling boy, that led Fabian to struggle so much with his second coming out: the idea that he didn’t have to be the womaniser his father was.

Only after Sophomore year could he even approach the topic, having been broken down so brutally in Leviathan and the pieces put together gently, a cracked shell of a boy that had followed the misguided steps of a man stronger than him. After their return from the Forest of the Nightmare King, he had found himself in Jawbone’s office, quiet and ashamed and confused, held together only by the love given to him, and the love he returned.  
Even then, though, Fabian’s second coming out was not a journey he was able to take alone. It took, of all people, the girl he’d placed so much of his performance in, and knew next to nothing about, to lend him a hand on his first steps: Aelwyn Abernant.

Blooming realization hits him like a truck after his very second kiss, no matter how much he had argued previously that he’d already gotten his kisses in. He hadn’t. His second kiss, at 17 years old, had just been given to Aelwyn Abernant, the same girl who had taken his first a year ago, before thoroughly kicking ass. They were in her bedroom at Mordred Manor, cramped onto a top bunk, facing one another with her hands over his, pressed to her waist, their faces mere inches apart after the separation of lips.

“Oh.” Aelwyn says, looking back at Fabian with a matching expression of confusion. It felt like placing a star shaped block in a square shaped hole. “That. Well, that did happen.”

“It definitely did.” Fabian nodded, his brow creased and lines wrinkled into his forehead from the force of the frown. “It… I’m not well-versed in this. We both know that, and you’re cruel, so I will say it in kinder words before you can. It’s not meant to feel like that, is it?”

“No.” Aelwyn agrees: for once, other than when she looks at Adaine, her expression softens. Eyebrows usually raised in a judgemental point fall and scrunch together as she examines him methodically, all of it showing, once again, how similar her and her sister are, Fabian notices fondly, with the part of his brain not racing to search for explanation of that god-awful kiss. “I don’t think this is for us, is it?”

“No,” is all he can say.

“I don’t think… I am for you, either, am I?” The words are chosen carefully, the emphasis even more so. “Nor do I think you are for me.”

He blinks at her. “What are you suggesting?”

“Fabian,” she says. “I think we might not be each other’s persuasions.”

“Oh.” Once again, reduced to a one syllable word. Clears his throat after a long moment of silence. “Are you saying…”

“I think so. For me, at least. And. Well, Fabian, I would say I don’t want to overstep, but we’re past that, aren’t we?” She laughs and it’s not cold towards him, per say, but it’s harsh in a way that he thinks resonates with him and can’t quite think why - or he can, but can’t make the final step. He can, but hasn’t for months. Years, even. He can, but he shouldn’t, or maybe he should. Wants to. Doesn’t. “Fabian, why did you ignore everyone else, time and time again, all for Riz?”

“Oh,” a repetition, like a parrot on his father’s shoulder - no, not that, no more comparing yourself to him, a voice inside himself echoes. Just repetition like a regular idiot.

“I think it’s the same reason I have avoided Sam since I moved back here. And I think we’re both just now realising how stupid we are.”

She says it heavy like a promise, not to him but to herself, and Fabian says nothing for a very long time. At some point, he comes back to himself, and Aelwyn is holding his hand. He nods at her, like a promise, not to her but to himself.

“I think I need to go.” He says, in a voice half his own. She nods back at him with a smile.

“He always seemed sweet on you, too, from what I remember. Didn’t like it when I kissed your face off. Or maybe that was just him not liking the attempted murder.”

Fabian scoffs a laugh and is grateful for it, the air flooding into his lungs, out again, like a person. “Maybe. Thank you, Aelwyn. I know you’ll keep this quiet. I’ll do the same.”

He rides home on the Hangman in silence, and it knows something is wrong. Fabian has the succinct suspicion that the Hangman knows, has always known. Or maybe he’s paranoid. Or maybe he’s not, and everyone knows, and hates him for it. And then he knows he’s paranoid, because why in any of the nine hells would his friends hate him for it, when they’re gay, too?

Too. The first ever recognition that he’s gay crosses his mind, and he nearly crashes the Hangman. He’s crying by the time he gets into Seacaster Manor, goes to Cathilda’s quarters as if walking on air but shrouded in fog, lays his head on her lap like he did when he was little, like he did when he was in Leviathan, like he did when he came home from his first session with Jawbone and cries, for a while, a small, familiar hand carding through his hair the whole while. Hallariel joins, too, eventually - still scared to make those steps but gently encouraged by the woman holding them all together, sometimes. And they sit there quietly, for a very, very long time, until Fabian finds his voice.

“Do you think Papa would have cared if I liked men?” It’s hardly a whisper.

“Sweetheart,” Hallariel says, and Fabian only sits and hopes the disappointment he’s imagining isn’t really present in her eyes. “Your father would not have given one single fuck about who you love, so long as you love them with pride.”

“Oh.” It seems to be all he can say today, and it’s all he does say.

He sleeps so badly that night.

But with a realisation as powerful as that, and facts you can think in the third person and hypothetical, it is never just one day. From the conversation with Aelwyn, it is another few months over the summer before Fabian can tell anyone in any real way. He can’t push it down - of course he can’t, it’s one of those things where you realise once and then it’s everywhere you look.

And worst of all, and best of all, all at once: Fabian’s realisation that he’s allowed to be gay comes hand in hand with his realisation that he might just be in love with Riz Gukgak, of all people.

Like his father raised him to be, Fabian is one for the dramatics. In for the copper, in for the gold. Why have one life-shattering realisation when you could fit two into the same breath?

So Fabian spends most of his summer silently in love with his best friend, hating himself for it in the moments that flash between his ears before he can catch the thought and stomp it into the ground, putting it out like burning embers. He spends his summer in love with his best friend, drowning in the embarrassing level of joy he feels whenever Riz so much as looks his way. He spends his summer searching for the right time, the right words, the right mood, the right moment.

He never finds it, because there never is a right time. Not when you’re just turning 17 and you’re stupid and you could be in danger at any moment. Not when you sometimes wake up with the feeling of your best friend’s dead body limp in your arms, shouting out into an empty room for a fucking revivify, please, quick, it’s already been half a minute. Not when every time he makes a joke, or gets defensive, you get one step closer to kissing him, what would be your first kiss that matters, in front of everyone else in the room.

Fabian makes the first smart decision of the entire summer one warm evening, the air heavy and hot and sticking to his skin like a second layer of clothing he can’t quite shed, when he rides the Hangman to Mordred Manor and marches into Figureoth Faeth’s room.

“Fig, I’m gay - hi Ayda, so sorry about this - anyway, I’m gay, I think, or I know, I’ve known for months, maybe longer if we undo some of the intense repression I’ve had going on - blame my dead father - or don’t, that’s harsh, the man is dead, but Jawbone did point some things out to me that directly parallel my upbringing and desire to imitate those I admire, anyway, beside the point.” Clears his throat, realises his chest is rising and falling a mile a minute, and maybe this is a manic episode. Clears his throat again. “How do I tell the Ball that I’m in love with him?”

Fig falls off her bed.

Ayda claps her hands with absolute delight.

“Wonderful!” She exclaims, in that way of hers that is just so endearing that it settles his racing heart, slowing it a beat or two. “Delightful. Should I leave the room so that you can plan your confession of your romantic feelings towards Riz?”

“No, you can stay, don’t worry. You’re gay. We can all be gay people talking about this. Or, gay people and a bisexual person. That’s fine.”

“It is fine!” Ayda reaffirms, beaming from ear to ear, fiery eyes somehow more alight than usual.  
Fig pops up from the floor and she looks like she’s just seen the strangest scene of her life, and after what they’ve been through together, the Bad Kids, that really is saying something. “Holy fucking shit, Fabian, you’re coming out?!”

“Wait. Did you know?”

“I mean, fuck, I had some suspicions when you ate glass because you missed him, and killed my freakin’ Dad trying to get him back. But, like, you’ve always been so Aelwyn this and hot girls that, that I thought… oh my god.” She stops herself, shaking her head wildly to snap it back into place and then charges him. Fabian throws up an arm in an act of self defence but suddenly, there’s arms around him squeezing him so tightly, and it’s Fig, of course it is. She’s bouncing on the tips of her toes, vibrating with excitement as she hugs him, her face pressed into the crook of his neck.

“I’m so proud of you, dude.”

And maybe he cries at that, just a bit.

The night is spent with just Fig and Ayda, at first, him nestled between them and talking it all out. But he’s in for the copper, in for the gold, and quickly decides that ripping off a bandaid is a better idea than drawing it out for months more. They call Kristen and Tracker down too, and Ragh, and then Adaine, and even Aelwyn, and soon enough Fabian being gay goes from a concept only known in the mind of himself and his mother, his therapist and Cathilda, to a fact shared between him and his closest friends.

(They text Gorgug the update, too, because Ragh really likes to let his boyfriend know things, and Fabian didn’t like his best friend being out the loop. Because, really, Riz isn’t his best friend. Or, he is. But not in the way he once was.)

Saying it makes it so real, and that feels so wrong, so bad, so terrifying. But then he meets the eyes of his friends and Kristen has used an entire packet of tissues to wipe up how much she’s cried, Tracker is holding her hand and giving him a thumbs up in another, Ragh looks equally weepy, Adaine is smiling a knowing smile and Aelwyn is giving him the look she gave him months ago, but warmer. If anyone asked, for her sake, Fabian would just say it's the summertime, that Aelwyn Abernant is still a stone-cold bitch that she prides herself in being.

Or maybe it’s something to do with the S shaped pendant hanging from her neck, but that isn’t any of his business.

When he looks at his friends, so full of pride that you could reach out and touch it, find it in the hands he’s holding, he finds that saying it gets easier each time he does. The word forms in his mouth turns from a curse to an exclamation, and he’s gay and it’s so fucking good to finally say it. 

As they all sit together in the afterglow of Fabian’s revelation, it comes to mind that he also told them all he’s in love with their one non-present friend. “Guys.” Fabian begins, and the gnawing anxiety comes back, hungry beast that it can be. “Is… Do you think that Riz would be interested?”

And, at once, everyone but him bursts into fits of laughter, as if he’s told the world’s funniest joke. He glares daggers at all of them, or tries to, but maybe he just looks terrified. “What? What’s funny? What am I missing?”

“Dude,” Kristen shoves him in his shoulder, rolling her eyes. “The fact that he’s been in love with you since freshman year.”

“WHAT?!”

They laugh harder, tears pricking at the corner of some of their eyes, and Fabian does the most teenage coming of age movie thing he’s ever done in his life, racing down the curled staircase of Mordred Manor and hopping onto the Hangman, hearing his friends hoot and cheer and holler in support, knowing without need of confirmation his entire plan:

“Hangman?”

“Yes, sire?”

“Take me to Riz.”

And then he’s racing the streets of Elmville, every traffic law in existence broken without second thought, the smile on his face almost painful, the hammering of his heart as loud as the honking of horns, and he’s up five flights of stairs with a burning of his lungs like secondhand smoke from a fire he’s ignited in his heart, his helmet only being torn off as he knocks thrice against the door, thrice again after not even five seconds, acting like a crazy person but what does it matter, if Riz is so close?

And then Riz is at the door, and Fabian is punched back into reality so hard that it liquifies his brain into goo.

“Fabian?” Riz asks. He has his gun in his hands, the paranoid guy that he is, and Fabian doesn’t blame him, but hates that he’s so scared, hates that he has reason to fear for his life like that, when he’s wearing an oversized shirt and the shorts he sleeps in and, oh, its 2am, of course he’s terrified.

Fabian remembers he needs to speak. Forgets all the words he knows, that he’s ever known, forgets the ability to remember new words. Riz looks so handsome in the awful lighting. “Hi.”

“Hey, are you okay? Is something happening? What the fuck is going on, man?” Riz’s eyes are roaming him, ever the investigator - or maybe not, if his friends are right. Maybe it never was about the investigation, between the two of them.

“Can I come in?” Fabian breathes out in one.

“Of course, dude, but you need to explain what the fuck is happening. Are you hurt, is everything okay?” He steps aside, lets Fabian in, and Fabian follows in his footsteps, but he’s not sure his feet even touch the ground. Fabian has spent enough time here to know that they’re home alone, the rest of the apartment silent other than the whirring of Riz’s old laptop fan. “Hey. Dude. You’re freaking me out.” 

“Sorry, yes, I’m fine. I’m great. No, yes, I’m wonderful.” Fabian gulps, and adrenaline is so close to anxiety, isn’t it? “Riz?”

“Fabian?”

“Can I kiss you?”

Riz blinks once, twice, reaches his hand right up to his glasses where Fabian knows a lazer rests, ready for use, a gift from Pok Gukgak himself. “Who the fuck are you, and what’s going on, and is Fabian okay? Is this something to do with Kalina?! I thought we got rid of this!”

Fabian yelps, snapping back to reality in full, putting his hands up. “THE BALL. It’s me! I swear - okay, okay, gods, okay, I see I have drastically underestimated your paranoia, and maybe it’s my fault, okay it definitely is, I really came at this too quick but I just came out to everyone, the Ball, well, okay, not everyone, but everyone but you, and now this is my coming out to you, too, I suppose, and also my confession of feelings, because I was told by, well, everyone we know, that you feel the same or might do and I swear if you shoot me I will be so pissed, I only have one eye-”

“Wait.” Riz interrupts. His hands drop to his sides, and they’re shaking, and Fabian wants to hold them so badly. “Wait, Fabian, is this a really fucking cruel prank, or are you serious?”

“This has been a big night for me. I think I’m in the middle of an anxiety attack, or a manic episode. But I am maybe the most serious I’ve ever been, Riz.” The room is so painfully quiet. “I promise.”

“Oh.” Riz says, and Fabian remembers the day he realised he was gay. Wonders if he’s come at this too fast. Worries, without any logic to it, that he’s disgusted Riz. The worry is quelled by a softening in Riz’s expression, a specific sort of relief he’s never seen on his friend’s face before. “Oh.”

The second one sounded different, for sure, and suddenly they’re smiling at each other. “Is that a yes?”

“Don’t be fucking smug, Seacaster.”

“I was aiming for hopeful.” And maybe his hands are shaking just as much, even when Riz closes the gap between them and takes them into his own and wow, his hands are so small, and he’s being tugged to sit down on a chair and he does, his legs practically buckling beneath him and now he’s face-to-face with Riz fucking Gukgak and god, he’s so handsome, was he always this handsome?

Riz’s hands rest either side of Fabian’s face. They’re still shaking. Fabian puts his hands on Riz’s waist. Flashes back in his mind to the months prior and can’t quite believe how different this feels. It feels right, with a boy. It feels even more right, with Riz.

“Are you sure this is okay?” It’s more a whisper on a breeze than the bold confession he’d had in mind.

“You talk too much, and you’re freakin’ clueless, dude. Of course it’s okay. Since goddamn freshman year, it would have been okay.” Riz laughs.

And then kisses him.

And Fabian thinks that Kristen and Fig are right to be kiss-obsessed, if it feels like this, and if it always feels like this, maybe he never needs to kiss anyone else ever again. And that being gay is a fucking wonderful thing, if it means feeling like this. And that he’s lucky, so lucky to have this. And that he’s proud.

Not for his father. Not for anyone else in the world. For himself. And for Riz.

The boy he loves so much that he could burst.

When they move back, no longer sharing the same air, Fabian realises there’s a tear spilling down his cheek, and Riz is the one who wipes it away. There was a brief moment on his way there when Fabian had considered not jumping straight into the L word. He realises now, in this moment of quiet concern when Fabian is the happiest he’s ever been, that that is a stupid idea. But the words weigh heavy in his shell-shocked mouth and it tastes like glue, no matter how much he wants to speak.

But the beauty of being in love with your best friend is that they’re just that: your best friend. Riz Gukgak, badass goblin detective from a badass goblin family, is smart enough to read people he’s never met before. Of course he knows what Fabian is thinking.

Of course he does.

“We’re not rushing into things here.” He says, and he looks so happy as he speaks. Sharp teeth flashing in the light, large, floppy ears relaxed, tail wrapped around one of Fabian’s legs. “I’ve been waiting forever. Well, okay, not waiting. I kind of had given up hope - but that’s not the point I’m making here. I mean, Tracker and Kristen have their names tattooed on each other. Fig and Ayda said it after, like, a week.”

“It?” Fabian says, aloud. In his head: I love you.

“It. You know. It. Unless I have super read this wrong, but, like - I know you. Super, super well. And you know me super well. And you saved my life and I haven’t stopped thinking about that, if we’re doing confessions.”

“If we’re doing confessions,” and his voice is shaking, and he goes to say it: “I crashed my papa’s boat into a building in hell because I thought you were dead, I almost died, Gilear did die, briefly, but I paid Kristen to revivify him.”

Riz’s mouth drops open and then he’s cackling with laughter, the force of it shaking him and then his arms around Fabian’s neck and they’re hugging, for the millionth time and for the first time all at once. “You’re so fucking dumb, Fabian. I love you too.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this chapter wasn't meant to be this long but fabian gets my compulsory heterosexuality and is my favourite character. oops.


	4. fig faeth.

Sticking it to the status quo became Fig’s thing the moment two horns started showing up through her hair. Before that, she’ll admit that she was something less than radical, content to be the girl-next-door. She liked pop music and preppy clothes and parties. Figureoth Faeth was a socialite chameleon, able to blend in with anyone with ease, tittering giggles, smalltalk and gossip coming so easy to her that, looking back, she may as well have worked towards eloquence bard.

Then, as things often do when they’re going altogether too well, they changed. Horns sprouted and a 13 year old Figureoth Faeth heard her life fall apart through the walls of her family home, muffled shouting from Sandra Lynn and Gilear becoming a soundtrack that pop music just wasn’t ever loud enough to drown out. It was happy, and she wasn’t, and that didn’t seem fair. The posters of smiling elven bands looking down on her seemed mocking, all of a sudden, and Figureoth decided that she was angry.

Her transformation into the new Fig was her first step into rebellion, taking a pair of scissors to hair that had touched the bottom of her back, cutting it almost in half and giving herself bangs that looked shit for good measure, too. Messy was good. Messy was her family, messy was her life, messy was her, and it could be her bangs, too. She took paint to her pastel-blue walls and painted them moody grey, tore down the pop posters and plastered the walls with bands she didn’t yet know the names of, swearing allegiance to the words of songs that hit her like an arrow through the heart, the ones that sounded bitter and spiteful and fucking pissed. She took her name, too, so elven, and cut it in half. Figureoth was gentle, lilting, a name on a breeze. Fig was short, to the point, a name that could be thrown like a knife. It was her, coming out of the cocoon of innocence she’d spent so long wrapped up in, forced to see the harsh light of day.

Before, Fig had never been boy-crazed. She loved people and parties and friends. She loved ice-skating, going to Basrar’s, taking trips to the beach. She loved being carefree in a way that she hadn’t even realised she was. The new Fig, the one living a life in the wreckage of everything she knew, didn’t have time to be boy-crazed either.

On the day Gilear moved out, Fig decided she didn’t want to be anyone crazed. On that weekend afternoon, with a half-broken moving truck beeping incessantly and the arguing not stopping, not even as the truck pulled away and tore off down the street leaving her in the dust-cloud of abandonment, with her mother, the liar, shouting down the road to no one and nothing, Fig decided she didn’t believe in love anymore.

Fig decided she knew two simple truths: one was that she needed to find her real dad, because he’d treat her better than this, and the other was that loving people, really loving people, was a one-way street to being fucked up and fucked over.

So, no, Fig Faeth had no need for falling in love, not one bit. She had a bass guitar, a new haircut and walls built so high that she’d never, ever let anyone climb them again.   
Or, well, maybe a few people, as a treat - her first day of school was an immediate detention from the stupid vice principle and she was thrown in the deep end with new friends, people who were kind enough to her that she could let them stick around. As a treat. When Sandra Lynn came to collect her after their (literally) deadly fight, she gave her the cold shoulder, brushing it off as if it were nothing. When Gilear seemed worried, too, she pushed that away.

The thing about Infernal Legacy, though, is that it’s just so tied to fire. Fire, strong enough to melt the corners of an ice cold heart. As soon as her friends entered her life and she spent time with their families, Fig found that it was just a bit harder than expected to keep everyone out, at arms reach, when it’s just so fun to spend time with them, to love them, to let Kristen stay at her place when she needs it, to have Adaine paint her nails and Fabian show off his motorbike and Gorgug play the drums with her and Riz explain his mysteries and a thousand other things that tug at the heartstrings and make it burn brighter and melt just a bit more away.

So, fine. Maybe Fig doesn’t hate everyone forever - the point gets made redundant surprisingly quickly when she does find her dad, Gorthalax the freakin’ Insatiable, and he’s all too well-rounded, calm and polite to allow Fig’s (maybe) unjustified hatred of her mom and Gilear to keep going. Maybe he’s right, that Fig putting him on a pedestal was a one-way street to hurting everyone but him, that adults are as complex as they are stupid, that forgiveness takes time but can be moved past and move forward from, so on and so forth and countless late-night chats about life later.

It’s hard. But it settles, eventually, and her family is different and new and maybe better than before, if she were to think about it.

The thing about injuries, though, is that they leave scars. And sure, with Fig’s new life and new family, as ever-expanding as it is (by sophomore year she’s potentially a sister to ½ of the bad kids and related to them all except Gorgug, a fact she doesn’t let them live down) she settles into a routine of loving the people she’s surrounded herself with, and step one of her two part plan has been achieved and rewritten. She found her dad, and now she has two dads, or maybe two and a half if Jawbone keeps dating her mom, and things are good. Mainly.

She doesn’t exactly have… healthy relationships, for a while. The model of what love looks like was put to the trial in front of her and it failed it’s test, crumbling away. The love of her parents failing solidified a fact in her mind - that relationships are bad, that they fail, that to put your heart on a platter for someone doesn’t guarantee they’ll like what they see. The allure of disguise becomes prominent, then, the ability to be who she wants, when she wants. It’s how she ends up in the hospital getting her kisses in with a doctor, in a police station as Hilda Hilda leaving a letter in a misguided solo-mission that ends in disaster. Her friends don’t get it, they think she’s fine, they think she doesn’t need her disguises and performances - they think she can just be Fig.

Fig thinks they’re either liars, or she’s fooled them far too well, too.

The thing about Fig is that she’s not just acting when she’s in disguise - Fig Faeth is an act, too. The performance of herself is one that’s constructed to a T, each detail polished and refined. Each line is delivered to gain a laugh, a smile, a reaction. Each quick quip that falls flat is enough to remind her she has to work harder to keep the life she feels like she’s stumbled into, one so full of friendship and love that she doesn’t feel worthy of. She’s the bard, the fun one, the funny one, the life of the party. That’s her job, as much as it is to cast healing word on those who need it. And her friends, wonderful as they are, are so wrapped up in their own problems - rightfully so, too, they’re a fucked up group of kids - that they don’t quite notice the tired look that dulls the spark in her eyes, sometimes, when the performance weighs heavy on her, and all she wants is for the curtains to close.

Her friends seem to think she’s emotionally open, though, and she isn’t quite sure how right that is. She’s open and closed and stuck somewhere in the middle. She remembers a phrase Jawbone said to her, once - if you have one leg in the past and one leg in the future, you’re pissing on the present. Rude, in a way that made her laugh. Right, in a way that made it stick in her head. But moving on is hard when the past is who you are today, and the future is something you don’t know yet, a stranger you can’t pass on the street because, well, you’re not on the same street yet.

When Fig looks at the past, she sees a world of problems at which she is the epicentre. If not for her, her parents wouldn’t have fallen out of love. If not for her attitude, Sandra Lynn wouldn’t have felt like an awful mom, wouldn’t have made so many mistakes while trying to overcompensate, wouldn’t have hurt people in the process of it. If not for her bitterness, maybe Gilear would be a little bit less sad. Or, well, if not for her whole existence, he might be less sad. That one stings too true, though, so she tries not to focus on it - tries, instead, to make his life better wherever she can.

When that fails, too, it hurts. But she keeps trying, and trying, and trying again. She does it with a smile on her face and optimism in her heart, but if you were to peek behind the corners, there’s a guilt that hurts to look at, too bright, like the sun, leaving spots in her vision that blind her and make her weak.

Out of everything in her life, Fig focuses on the past the most. Coming in second is the future, which she never manages to discern. Coming in last, is the present, despite Jawbone’s warning to her.

That’s why meeting Ayda Aguefort hits her like a freight train, coming left out of field and knocking her world on its axis. When Fig talks to Ayda for the first time, she’s not quite sure how the Compass Point library isn’t toppling over, how the Leviathan isn’t drowning, how the whole place isn’t on fire, or underwater, or maybe something else, she can’t quite focus, there should be lyrics in her head, her thoughts are usually good at being twisted into the poetic, but all she thinks is wow. I need to impress this girl, so. fucking. bad.

The day that Fig Faeth meets Ayda Aguefort is the day that point two in her simple two part plan fails, leaving it with a 0% success rate - not her greatest success, plan-wise, but somehow still not her greatest failure.

Sometimes, a 0% success rate is a good thing, Fig thinks.

In the space of just a week (albeit a shitty week, a week with so much happening in it that she thinks she might die at any second, and not in the fun sort of danger is sexy and I fill my life with it for shits and giggles kind of way, in the I’ve had Fabian nearly die, gone to hell, gone to a fucked up forest, and oh, god, Jawbone is gonna have a busy schedule after this kind of way), Fig “I don’t need any romance” Faeth falls in love.

When Fig tries to think about Ayda, her head explodes. She tries to do the list thing - Ayda is good at that, good at lists, so fuckin’ organised that it makes her feel like she’d forget her head if it wasn’t screwed onto her neck compared to the other girl - but fails, of course, because her thoughts bounce around like a fireball ping-ponging off the walls of a cave that can’t contain it. When Fig tries to think about Ayda, the thoughts are too big to fit in her head, too big to be contained in her heart, too wonderful and personal and brilliant to fit into any song. The waste-paper bin overflowing onto the floor gives that away, though. The pages of journals doodled with flaming eyes do, too.

Still, she tries: the first thing that comes to mind is, hot. And, yes, in the fun way, obviously - Fig has never seen a person as wonderful to look at as Ayda Aguefort. She belongs in an art gallery, but she doesn’t, because Fig gets overcome with this burning sense of jealousy - burning, hot, there it is again, heat metaphors! - that she’s not used to, possessiveness in a way that isn’t gross, not like so many guys have tried to be with her before she kicked them in the shin and they fucked off. Possessiveness in a way that she has a person who is hers, and she gets to look at her, kiss her, hold her, appreciate the way her eyes flicker as they flick from side to side. She gets the details of Ayda that nobody else is allowed to, and she doesn’t care if it’s selfish.

Fig’s already gotten distracted.

Hot, is what she tries to think of, first. Flaming wings, eyes, hair. Hot to the touch. Fig is immune to fire, though. When Adaine hugs Ayda - and, no, she won’t get jealous, it’s fine - she lets out a little wince, sometimes, like touching a tray that's just a bit too hot. When Fig touches her, though, the warmth is a comfort, sinking into a hot bath, hugging a hot waterbottle, her own person one, her’s, her’s, her wonderful Ayda and - again, distracted.

Another thing that Ayda brings to Fig is something she didn’t know she needed - questions. Always, questions. Clarifications needed on jokes she makes, and Fig is happy to give them. Check-ins, constant, careful check-ins, on how Fig is feeling. Until Ayda, the jokes she tossed into her mini-routines of fake happy were littered with allusions to insecurity, jokes that strum the strings of her unhappiness without actually getting into it, because who would want to broach that subject?

Well, who would be Ayda, because she asks. When Fig jokes about looking better in a disguise, and the others laugh, Ayda’s eyes form into a forceful, accusative squint, the fire inside of them flickering brighter, burning anger forming like a staking fire - “are you all calling Fig ugly?”

“Huh?” Kristen replies, mouth half full of food. “What? No, no, it’s, like, it’s a joke.”

“Why is it funny? Fig is not ugly. We’re all aware that Fig is the most beautiful woman on the planet.”

“Hey!” Kristen interjects, and Tracker hits her in the arm lightly, shooting a pointed look that shuffles Kristen into submission, talking her out of a pointless fight without a word shared. Fig watches them do that, watches the domestic debate carried out in the space of 3 seconds, can’t help but smile at how married they are, how well they understand each other.

“Oh, well, it’s like… Well, none of us think Fig is ugly, at all.” Adaine explains. Fig likes watching Ayda when Adaine explains, likes the curious tilt of her head., the trust she places in her best friend. “It’s, I guess, a sort of self-deprecating joke, that she thinks that she looks better in disguise.”

Ayda’s brow furrows further. “But it’s not funny, nor true. I don’t like jokes that serve cruel purposes, and all this joke does is solidify the idea that people prefer Fig in disguise, which could not be further from the truth. I love to look at Fig. Very much. She is very wonderful to look at.”

“Baaaabe,” Fig says, and she’s blushing, tucking herself under Ayda’s arm, feeling the heat from her wings warm her back. “It’s alright. I was just joking. It’s okay.”

“I think making such jokes could be harmful for you, my paramour. If you repeat something about yourself it is harder to stop believing it. Jawbone has helped me realise this.” She says it matter of factly and full of conviction and it makes her think that, well, maybe one less cruel joke to herself wouldn’t hurt, if only for Ayda’s sake.

Another thing: Ayda’s mind works differently to Fig’s - organised to her chaos, methodical rather than sporadic, but they share enough between the two of them that Fig realises she’s found a counterpart in the most wonderful ways. They both have the same hot-headed, emotional impulsivity that means they would do (and can do and have done) anything for the other - flooding hell, escaping the Forest of the Nightmare King. Ayda sees Fig for what she is, without all her glory, and loves her regardless. And makes that love known.

Fig’s (so-called) prior relationships, previously shrouded in disguise, shadow, and deception are all kicked into the gutter with Ayda’s open honesty. A librarian by trade, dedicated to knowledge in the same studious way Adaine is, the exact way Fig is not - magic is innate, for her, a force from her heart and soul rather than her brain, and that, she reasons, is why matters of the heart make more sense. Ayda’s brain is like the library she lived in for her life, her lives - organised, methodical, wonderful, beautiful, and Fig has gotten distracted again.

The mind of a researcher lives inside the head of Ayda Aguefort and Fig, it seems, is her favourite thing to study. Fig watches Ayda as Ayda watches Fig watch her in return, and when Ayda likes what she sees, the words of praise escape almost effortlessly - fantastic! brilliant! amazing! They stick in Fig’s head louder than any cheer from a crowd in front of her, more enthusiastic and more real, or at least real for the real Fig, not the Fig on stage. She loves to watch Ayda watch her, loves the way her eyes scan over her, loves seeing the lightbulb of an idea appear over her head, loves to see the gears turning in that brilliant mind, so smart, so creative, so attentive, and all of it directed at her.

When Fig thinks about Ayda, she used to think she was lucky. When she tells Ayda this, Ayda is confused. “Why are you counting yourself as lucky, Fig?”

“Well, duh, because I’ve tricked you into liking me.” She smiles, and they’re laying together in Fig’s bed, staring up at the ceiling for no reason, hands intertwined between them.

“You have not tricked me. There’s no spell that I am aware of endearing me towards you. I like you of my own accord.” Ayda counters - logical, assured. When she speaks next, there’s a hint of defensiveness in her voice that makes a smile creep onto Fig’s face. “I am too powerful of a wizard to be charmed without wanting to be.”

“Oh, you want me to charm you?”

“It would be wholly unnecessary. I am already very, very charmed.” Fig’s smile only grows as Ayda sits up, gesturing for her to follow. She does, she would anywhere, to sit up on the edge of her bed or to the end of the world. She files that away for a song. “Why do you think I would not be?”

“I mean, I don’t know.” Fig shrugs, shuffling so that she and Ayda sit side to side, then shuffling again, closer, tucking herself into her side. She likes that Ayda is tall. Likes that, a lot. “I just… you’re cool as hell, and I’m still waiting for you to realise you’ve got yourself into something you’re not wanting.”

“A ridiculous theory to have.” Ayda replies bluntly, and her eyebrows furrow at the snorted laugh it elicits from Fig. “Was that wrong for me to say?”

“No, nonono,” Fig twists herself, slightly, to look at Ayda better, resting one hand on her knee. “It’s nice of you. I like… I like that you don’t let me get away with my anxiety. Or, well, I guess, you don’t let my anxiety get away with me? Like, if I say things, you’ll tell me if they’re stupid.”

“You are never stupid. You are the most wonderful person I have ever met, and my girlfriend, and I love you, and you look very beautiful right now and I like it when you touch me casually and - oh. I’ve gotten distracted. Sorry.” Fig loves that their minds get wrapped up in each other. Files that one away in her mental lyricbook, too. Realises as she does that her lyricbook meets Ayda’s library in a nice clashing of mental filing systems. “I am simply trying to explain that you are wonderful. And you have low self esteem.”

“If the shoe fits, I guess.” Fig shrugs, her other hand leaning on the bed, leaning her towards Ayda.

“What shoe?”

“Oh, uh. Like, if it fits, I wear it - so, like, it fits that I have kinda low self-esteem, I guess, so I gotta own up to it. I never realised I was making so many shit jokes about myself until you pointed it out, y’know.”

“I am glad that you are kinder to yourself now, then, Fig. I like it when everyone is kind to you. I like to be kind to you.” There’s a tenderness in her voice, body language, eyes, that makes Fig think she might cry.

“I like it when you’re nice to me, too. Wanna be nicer?” Fig asks, a smirk - soft, though, full of love rather than mischief - playing on her lips, her tail flicking to the side for a moment. She watches Ayda’s eyes track this, delights in it.

“Of course. I take any opportunity to improve. I would love to be able to be kinder to you.”

“Okay. Let’s be extra kind, then.” And she pulls Ayda in for a kiss by the shirt, a giggle escaping against her lips at the shocked half-squak it elicits from her, then a soft hum as Ayda’s hands move to cradle her face - gentle, calloused hands, warm, comforting, perfect.

When Fig thinks of Ayda, and she does, frequently, it’s sometimes Figureoth Faeth that comes to mind. Figureoth was never boy-crazed - or, person crazed - but, she was already bisexual. For Fig and Figureoth, who they loved was never an issue - she knows that she’s always found girls as pretty as boys and that was that, no huge coming out, just a fact from the first time she paid attention to who passed her on the street. Fig has never had an issue with that, and looking at her wonderful friends, who have struggled and fought and won, she’s (for once) grateful to have missed out on a fight.

The issue was not who, but how. Love wasn’t attainable. Love was dangerous. Love was disposable. Love was there and then it wasn’t. Rule number 2 of Fig’s two part plan was to avoid this vulnerability, to take calculated risks to sidestep it completely, to shroud herself in disguise and shadow as to avoid ever being seen in her true light, to ever even allow for love to fall upon her.

And Ayda changed that.

When Fig thinks of Ayda, she no longer counts herself as the lucky one. Ayda helped her with that, too. They’re both lucky, they’re complimentary, they’re a harmony that sounds so good that it makes her shiver and jump and shout and feel like she can run a marathon, something so invigorating and new and wonderful that she realises, oh, this is what love can be. This is what love is, and will continue to be.

Ayda illuminates the world that Fig lives in - warm, radiant, resplendent. When Fig finds love in her own heart, she sees it everywhere else, too. She sees how much joy it brings into Sandra Lynn’s life, sees the smiles it pulls from her friends' faces (and so many of them are dating, now! It rules!), sees that it makes flowers bloom and the world turn round and sees, most of all, that love isn’t weak. Love is dangerous. Love is rebellious, love is the act of cutting shitty bangs and repainting walls and not caring what anyone else thinks about it, because it makes you happy. Love has burned in her heart the whole time, strong as any other fire in the pit of hell, and it just… wasn’t being used right. It was tucked away to protect it, to not let it be used as a bargaining chip, to not have it used against her.

When Fig sees Ayda flood hell for her, she learns the true power of love.

When Fig thinks of Ayda, she finally thinks of the present.

She thinks it's a wonderful place to be. While she might not love herself the way Ayda loves her quite yet, she loves to be herself, be the person Ayda loves, be the person who gets to love Ayda. And that’s a big step in the right direction.

No more pissing on the present.


	5. adaine abernant.

When all your friends are kiss-obsessed and you’re not, it is not the best feeling. Adaine is sixteen years old. She doesn’t yet care about dating. She can’t remember the last time she had a crush on someone - or, if she’s ever even really had one, because when you’re 8 it doesn’t really count, especially if you only have a crush on a boy because he’s the only one not obsessed with your big sister.

No, it doesn’t feel great, watching everyone get into relationships, fall in love for the first time, have all those wonderfully normal teenage experiences right in front of her own eyes, as though she’s watching a movie while all her friends star in it. But, if they’re in a romance, then she is starring in her own personal tragedy.

Adaine, for her first year at Aguefort, and her sophomore year, is far too preoccupied with problems bigger than kissing to focus on, well… that. Kissing, or lack thereof. And, even afterwards, as she watches all her friends continue to date and love and fight and break up and make up and make out… she doesn’t really… care, too much. Not enough to become personally involved, not with any of them, at least. There’s nobody she likes like that. There’s nobody she’s liked like that in her life, if you don’t count the nice boy from when she was 8.

But Adaine likes knowing things. Adaine likes labels, organisation, knowledge - it’s why she bonds with Ayda, another person appreciates not just knowing what there is to know now, but another diviner, another person who knows the burden of what is to come. It’s the same as Riz, too, with Riz’s skill for investigation, keen yellow eyes flicking over a room, his brain working so fast you can practically see steam coming from his floppy, green ears. For a while, in the two of them, although admittedly longer for Riz, she thinks she’s found people who care less for kissing and care more for knowing.

And then, of course, they get wrapped up in the whole caring about kissing thing, too. Ayda falls for Fig like a meteor falling to the planet, shooting across the sky, bright, beautiful, wonderful, and Adaine is so happy for her newfound best friend, of course she is. She loves to see Fig and Ayda together, loves their smiles, loves the way the two of them - admittedly, a couple she hadn’t seen fitting together so well, but maybe she’d not been looking? maybe she didn’t know what to look for? - but she does miss Ayda’s company in the Smart Singles Club.

Riz stays single for longer, and it’s through him that Adaine realises just how oblivious she is to the inner workings of most - most? most her friends, at least, maybe? - teenagers, one night in particular when they’re in his Kalvaxus-purchased office. She’s sat on the corner of his desk, watching as he stares intently at the board in front of him with a glazed-over look in his eyes that she presumes is focus. They’ve been working on mini-mysteries for the better part of three hours, and she’s more than happy to keep going, the warm mug of tea in her hands a steady reward for the work she puts in on the arcane side.

“So,” she begins, a confident one-syllable introduction that usually makes Riz pay attention, his ears lifting. This time, they don’t. Her brow furrows, but she continues. “Well, I was thinking, if the two of them were at Basrar’s for 4pm, they surely couldn’t have been in Bastion by 5 because of--”

“Adaine?” Riz cuts her off, and her eyes widen. He’s either had a brilliant idea, or he’s being quite rude.

“Yes?”

“Do you think Basrar’s is a good place for a date?” He asks. And, okay, she thinks, weird way to go about hypotheticals. They already know their investigation focuses on a couple - some senior at Aguefort wanting to know if they’re being cheated on.

“I wouldn’t know. I’ve never been on a date, but I’d imagine so.” She answers. “But, we already know it was a date. What does the quality of it have to do with anything? Oh, or - oh! Are you saying that it’s a good date, so that shows commitment?”

“What?” Riz turns round, looking confused.

“What?” Adaine shoots back, immediately defensive, as if it’s a counterspell.

“No, ugh, nothing. Nothing.” He runs a hand down his face lightly, shakes his head, the curls of hair flopping under his cap before he takes a post-it note and writes on it before sticking it to the board. “That’s actually a good idea, though.”

“Oh,” Adaine says, smiling slightly at the compliment. “Thank you. But why were you asking?”

“No reason.” Adaine raises an eyebrow pointedly. “Fine. Personal reasons.”

“Do I not get to know?” She puts her mug down, hops off the desk, goes to stand nearer to Riz but not look at him, instead focus on the board in front of her. “We’re friends, Riz. Very good friends, actually, I’d say.”

“I know. Obviously, yeah, I know.” He sighs quietly, shrugging. “I wanna ask Fabian there.”

“On a date?!”

“Yes, on a date!”

“Oh.”

“Yeah.”

A quiet falls over the room, Adaine at once realising, oh, that makes sense, of course that makes sense, how didn’t I see that? along with the realisation that she might just be the last one of her friends to stay single, and that… doesn’t feel great. She can see Riz shifting in his spot, though, and flashes a supportive smile onto her face. “No, that’s great, Riz. I hope he says yes.”

“Hah. Yeah. Me too.” He shrugs, turning to Adaine properly. “Adaine, is there anyone you…?”

“Not that I know of.” She answers honestly. “I just… I suppose, I’m not bothered.”

“No, that’s fair. Yeah. When I got to talk to my Dad, he said it’d come or it wouldn’t, and it’s fine either way.” He says it like it’s advice, like a suggestion, and Adaine thinks she knows what he means.

“Yeah. I suppose.” She considers stopping there, but it’s Riz. And Riz is nice to talk to, because their heads work in similar ways. “I just… I want a label. For whatever it is I’m feeling. I like labels, I like knowing things, I like knowing what I am and where I fit and to whom I belong to, other than myself. Community, if that makes sense.”

“It does. I tried, like, fifty different labels before I realised I was gay, y’know.”

(Adaine didn’t. Riz hasn’t spoken to this stuff about her, or to anyone, maybe, because for all they respect each other’s secrets, the Bad Kids are bad at keeping them. For example: her surprise birthday party. Nobody was surprised, not by one bit of it, not even the fact that Adaine knew exactly where, when and how she was to be surprised. Fig even complimented her acting.)

For a moment, she weighs up the right thing to say in her mind - she’s never even heard him call himself gay before, and surely there’s a right thing to say here, and she just doesn’t know it, and she’s at risk of doing something wrong - and then she takes a breath, calms herself, reminds herself of Jawbone’s words. To be her truest self is to be the best version of herself, so she replies honestly: “I didn’t know that. I don’t think I even knew you were gay.”

He shrugs again, smiles at her in a way that shows off pointed teeth, a flicking of his long, green tail showing that he finds something amusing. “I didn’t feel the need. For me, figuring my stuff out was… I don’t know. Personal. Kept it to myself. Like, Kristen figured it out in front of us, Fig didn’t like... announce she was bi, but we all knew. Everyone does it differently.”

“How’d you figure it out, then?”

“Clue board.”

“Fuck off.” Riz raises his eyebrows at her. “Oh, you’re not even joking, are you?”

He laughs, shaking his head. “Nope. It helped, though. I thought I was like, aromantic asexual. Then I wasn’t. And was, and then five other things, then a brief period of like, pure crisis, and then, well. Fabian. I like Fabian.”  
“I wish I liked someone, to help me figure out how I feel.” She sighs, wrapping her arms around her middle.

“Wanna take my crush on Fabian away from me?”

“Gods, no. No, not for all the gold in Solace.”

“You might not like men!” Riz’s eyes light up, his head tilting in that thinking way of his, and Adaine realises in that moment she’s at high risk of becoming Riz’s next mystery and, although she wouldn’t judge another person’s process, she doesn’t want that for herself, so she shakes her head thoroughly.

“No, no, don’t say that. I don’t know that. Anyways, that’s not a men thing. It’s a Fabian thing.” A pause. “Really, Fabian sparked your gay crisis? Fabian, of all people?”

“Shut up, Adaine.” He punches her in the arm, lightly, and gets back to work. She smiles, and puts the conversation on her sexuality to the back of her mind. That can be one for another day.

And, it is. Riz gets with Fabian, of course - a dramatic thing that nobody hears the end of from either side for months, the two of them gushing about their new boyfriend when the other isn’t around, and remaining in the same fun, bullying way they’d always been when they were together. Adaine is, officially, the last single one of the Bad Kids - and she doesn’t mind, per say.

It’s not a longing for a relationship. She doesn’t need a person. After Spring Break, the things she has to contend with are smaller and bigger all at once, they’re in the past but affecting her present and future, and for a few months she bounces from therapist to therapist as many, unsurprisingly enough, don’t quite know how to handle I killed my dad. She finds one, eventually, and begins to unpack that, but misses the days of sitting in Jawbones office, offloading to him. When she explains that to her therapist, the kind-faced halfling woman politely points out that she could still be doing that, probably is, without realising, just in a familial sense, rather than one of a patient and client.

Family is something Adaine is still adjusting to.

She broaches the subject with Jawbone, eventually. Once again, cup of tea in hand, as if it's a shield. Pointless, without logic, and still comforting despite the fact. “Jawbone,” she starts. He’s her Dad, but she doesn’t want to call him that, yet, and he doesn’t mind one bit. He puts his paper down and looks at her with a smile. “Can we talk?”

“Of course, kiddo.”

“I don’t know what I am.” A beat of silence, pounding in Adaine’s ears like a drum. “Sexually.” She cringes. “Sexuality-wise.”

“Okay.” Jawbone says, shuffling his seat just a bit closer to her, leaning forward slightly and giving a tilt of the head that shows he’s thinking. Family, Adaine thinks, is knowing these sort of things without worrying. “Well, kid, d’you wanna talk about it?”

“Yes. Yes please.” 

(Family is having that question offered to her and answering honestly, without fear of repercussions.)

“Of course. Go ahead, Adaine. What are you thinking?”

“Well.” And that’s… a start. She tries to organise her thoughts into an orderly line, but they slip away like clouds on the breeze. She huffs a quick sigh, frustrated before the beginning, and fighting back a strange urge to cry that stings at her eyes like pinpricks from a needle. “I don’t know. I don’t know, and that’s what's stressing me out. I don’t care about dating anyone right now, I don’t need to know for someone else. I need - I need to know for me.”

“Mhm,” Jawbone reaches a hand out, places it over one of Adaine’s lightly. “So, labels are important to you, yeah?”

“Yes.”

“Okay. Why’d you want one so bad? And what’s making it so hard for you to pick?” His voice is gentle, the questions asked in a 

And that, Adaine hadn’t been expecting. A good question, but one she’d not considered. Why did she need a label? Well, there was no rule for it. But she wanted one. Wanted to fit inside a box she could call home, define herself - knowledge. Knowledge is good, knowing yourself is good, finding yourself is good.

In the time after Sophomore year, Adaine had watched as Aelwyn found herself. And she loves Aelwyn, so, so much. She loves that Aelwyn goes to therapy and sleeps on a bunk bed near her and is around the house and is kinder and is trying. She loves that she is healing, that they’re healing, together, step by tiny step, from all the awfulness they’ve seen together, been through together, done to one another. But it doesn’t seem fair, still, that Aelwyn has found herself first. It doesn’t seem fair that she settled on a label and found that comfort so quickly. It doesn’t seem fair that it’s another thing that she does with ease that Adaine can’t hope to follow in the footsteps of.

She realises that she’d been rambling those thoughts aloud, and that she’s crying a little. That? That was unexpected. She didn’t realise it had gotten to that point. She attempts to steel herself, wiping her eyes with the back of her jacket and sniffing back more tears, taking a steadying breath, but when she opens her eyes back up to see the gentle concern etched onto Jawbone’s face, there’s no helping it - she bursts back into tears.

“This is so stupid. I can’t be jealous of Aelwyn for this, I don’t even know if I’m a lesbian, I don’t - sometimes, I like guys, sometimes I think I don’t, sometimes I don’t know if I like anyone, sometimes - gods, why is it so complicated?”

“Because people are complicated, kid. Attraction is… complicated, when there’s so many camps you could fall into. I know Kristen’s doing great work with the GSA at Aguefort. You know, even if you don’t know what you are, you’re welcome there.” He speaks soft and low, his voice a comforting grumble as he pats her hand.

“But I feel like people will expect me to just… know. People expect me to know things. I’m meant to be an oracle - why can’t I oracle my own sexuality? It’s stupid.”

“Okay, okay, kiddo.” He pats her hand again and smiles, soft. “I’m going to be honest with you here - for the most part, people at a GSA will not give a single shit who you’re attracted to. And if they do? Fuck them. That's the business of you and anyone you date, and nobody else.”

Her brow furrows, then relaxes. She sighs, letting tension fall from her body. “Okay. I mean… I suppose? I don’t… I’m not straight. I know that. I think. I think I’m certain on that one, at least.”

“Have you… I’m sorry if this is oversteppin’ here, so tell me if it is, but… why not just class yourself as questioning, for now? You know, if you want a label. Seems as good as any, huh?”

Adaine stops at that. She thinks, long and hard, staring ahead at the wooden table in front of her. Questioning. That… works. That feels right. It feels enough like committing to something, without being in too deep. And she knows that changing labels isn’t wrong, but she knows she likes to be right. She knows she likes things that fit, like her jacket, like her friends, like her place in Morded Manor. She likes questioning. She likes the idea of looking for an answer, and the state of waiting for it to be found.

Questioning is good, she thinks, and she nods to Jawbone to tell him so. “That… It does, yes. It’s not bad.”

She’s still sixteen and not interested in kissing or dating. She’s 16, and that is so young. She doesn’t need every figured out just yet, she reminds herself. She’s working through bigger issues than that, and dating can be put on the back burner, especially for now. She’s not the same as her friends, who have their labels sorted, who have boyfriends and girlfriends and partners, and she realises that… that’s okay. She’s no less welcome in the GSA meetings. She’s no less welcome in their hearts. When she announces it to them, Kristen even offers her a Cassandra worshipper shirt - the question mark bold and beautiful, because not knowing is a path to discovering.

And what’s more wonderful than that?


	6. riz gukgak.

The one thing that everyone knows about Riz Gukgak is that he loves to solve mysteries. He does it publicly, of course, with his (relatively recently) licensed private investigator business taking cases around Elmville and with the reputation the Bad Kids now have for solving problems that may well be above their pay grade. He takes them on as work and hobby in one, and you don’t work a day in your life if you do what you love - or, well, you most definitely do, Riz is only 16 years old and he has had some days in his life, but at least there’s a sense of enjoyment to be found most of the time, even if you have to squint to find it. 

There are, however, some mysteries that Riz solves out of the public eye. Some people would call these mysteries self reflection, but Riz isn’t an expert of self reflection, he’s an investigator. So instead, he phrases it in a way that works for him and looks at his own life from the detached eyes of a level-headed researcher, investigator, private eye.

In the back room of his office, the one room in the building that the other Bad Kids don’t have a key to, Riz has a board pinned up to figure out, ironically, the biggest mystery in his life: himself.

It might be stupid, and Riz is certainly self-aware enough to be embarrassed by it, hence the fact that it’s hidden away in what’s meant to be a storage closet. But he’s little, so he fits fine, and there’s something about the pressing feeling of four small walls around you that really gets the gears turning up there, he thinks. He’s always worked best under pressure. Or, maybe, that’s the only environment he’s ever worked in. Either way, even if it’s stupid, it works. Or, works enough, works better than anything else has so far.

(Not that he’s tried many other things. Or any other things, other than a brief attempt at emotional introspection that just left him tired, queasy and confused. He doesn’t want to talk to Jawbone or his friends about it, and other than a brief trip to Heaven, he can’t talk to his Dad about it. The trip to heaven did inspire the mystery board, though. Small successes.)

The inner machinations of Riz’s mind are something he struggles to understand. He works on two juxtaposed levels, and has to find the middle ground of the two of them. On one hand, his head is busy, cluttered, bouncing around faster than he can possibly hope to comprehend. On the other, he works at a detailed, analytical pace, looking at each detail, zooming in on them and going through with a fine-toothed comb. The dichotomy of the messy thoughts and clean analysis he needs to understand makes the boards a good option: they’re physical, so he can get out of the tangled ropes of his head and see his thoughts in a form he can touch, move, readjust at his own pace. They’re pinned up and tracked from thought to thought, no longer bouncing around like a logo on a paused DVD.

So, surely, it makes sense to pinboard your personal life.

Specifically, the process of figuring out your sexuality.

Right?

It starts when everyone else (other than Adaine, it seems) becomes kiss obsessed, and he simply… doesn’t. He knows about asexuality and aromanticism, and thinks on those for a while. Considers slapping that label on for himself, but… no. Or maybe no. Or maybe yes. The lingering doubt is focused on the idea of, well… men, and how he feels about them. 

Like the detective that he is, from the age of fourteen onwards, Riz Gukgak has a long-term project in which he tracks information on himself, and his feelings on the subject of romance. On a mystery board.

Just like any rational person would do.

At first, Riz thinks that he’s not interested in dating. He realises this most of all when everyone else does care, when Gorgug and Zelda and Tracker and Kristen begin dating, when Fig gets her kisses in with the doctor at the hospital (and on that subject: ew, gross - does that make him asexual, or is it just gross to watch Fig kiss a grown man in morally dubious circumstances?), when Fabian kisses, and shortly afterwards seemingly falls in love with, Aelwyn Abernant at the party. He doesn’t feel the need to then, hates the idea of it, but he realises when he connects the red string back to the other events that year that maybe he’s just too busy to care.

He realises he doesn’t really like women. He just… doesn’t seem to, at all. He sees them and knows they’re pretty, with soft curves and soft smiles and soft hands and soft voices and, sure, they’re sweet. But he doesn’t really… see it. Not in the way Kristen talks about loving women, once she can talk about that sort of stuff, not with the lilt of joyful birdsong in her voice. If liking women is meant to make you feel like that, then no. Riz realises he doesn’t like women.

The other thing he realises, is less a realisation, more a one word question: men? 

That point is left alone on the clue board for a long time. It’s a post-it note pressed near a picture of Fabian, which at first is firmly put down to coincidence. Riz justifies it in his mind that Fabian is the ideal guy, with popularity, talent, humour, athleticism and more under his belt. For a long time, Riz thinks he wants to be like Fabian.

And then, the ball drops, or… it dropped, and Riz finally sees it bouncing around the floor like an idiot, about a year and a half late. For a rogue, his reactions in this one are way delayed. When Riz finally makes the connection between all of his feelings with the help of a spool of red string, it paints a picture of which the first brushstroke was made the first time Fabian took his cap off, ruffled his hair and flashed his altogether too nice smile at him, in the first two months of their friendship. 

It turns out that Riz wasn’t wanting to be Fabian, he was… well, more wanting to be the Aelwyn in the scenario, which is as insane to him as it is embarrassing. Equally, it’s less that Riz wasn’t interested in dating, it was more that he wasn’t interested in dating anyone other than one specific guy. He doesn’t like women. He does like men, or at least… one of them. Probably more, Riz realises, as he looks back in his catalogue of memories and sees a very definitive theme popping out from all of the movies he’s watched, all the heroes he focused on and the fact that, well, maybe it’s not always just the heroism he focused on in those movies he loved while growing up.

The night that Riz connects the dots on his sexuality, he doesn’t feel like his life has changed. He knows that it’s significant. He feels that sense of pride he gets warming his chest, the same one he gets when he solves any mystery. But he doesn’t feel it in the same way Kristen talks about her realisation. More than anything, he feels, nestled up next to that sense of pride, a sense of dissatisfaction that he just so happens, apparently, to have failed to realise his friendship with Fabian wasn’t just that.

Really, in retrospect, there were hints well before the bardic inspiration that made him need to go take a breather outside, talking to the Hangvan for a solid 20 minutes about the local flora and fauna just to calm himself down for a reason he didn’t yet understand.

The very same night, Riz comes out. To his mom, at least. For Riz, his sexuality is his business. He realises that as he realises that he’s gay - that, immediately, he doesn’t count himself as stuck in the closet. Rather, it’s… his thing. Nobody needs to know unless they ask, and that’s fine with him.

Other than his mom, of course. But that’s just because he likes to talk to her.

By the time he gets home from his office, it’s 4am. He drops his briefcase by the door like a businessman coming home from work, with all the normality in the world despite the ridiculous hour. As he’d expected, Sklonda was still awake - she sits at the kitchen table with no fewer than 6 coffee mugs around her, paperwork spread out on the table as her eyes dart from sheet to sheet in the process of absorbing information, in the very same way Riz’s own do - in her stance is the shadow of his own actions, and he’s always so happy to realize he can track the line from mother to son with ease.

“Hey, kid.” Sklonda greets him, without having to look up. She takes a sip of coffee and pulls a face. “Eugh. Stone cold. I know I should tell you to sleep, but I know what you’re like, so… want a cup?”

“Hey, mom. Yeah please.” He walks to the table and hops up onto a seat, tail immediately wrapping around the leg of the chair, a nervous habit of his that lets him know that, oh, maybe he is a bit nervous about this. Weird. “Can we talk about something, though? Or are you busy?”

Sklonda’s head cocks to the side and she nods, immediately. “Yeah, of course, sweetie. Let me get us our drinks.”

She kisses the top of his head and goes to the kettle, going through the motions of making the two coffees in silence. In that minute, Riz finds his entertainment in the sight of his own hands, twiddling his thumbs together, looking at the light layer of fuzz on the back of his hands, at the small, sharp claws on the ends of his fingers. At some point, his thoughts drift to Fabian, and his hands, and their hands, together. He thinks, with a sense of detached clarity aside from the hammering of his heart in his chest, that he’s always had these sorts of thoughts, and it's a miracle that denial was a strong enough force to shift them into the category of being platonic. He thinks, similarly, that now he’s noticed, he won’t stop noticing them and… for once in his life, he’s not looking forward to seeing Fabian next.

“Right.” Sklonda says as she sits down, pushing Riz’s favourite mug over towards him. “What’s on your mind, kid?”

“Uh. I’m gay.” He blurts it out in one. There’s the briefest moments of silence, so Riz decides it’s his job to fill it. “I just figured it out. I was - it’s what I’ve been working on, when I said I had a private project. I kinda thought I didn’t like anyone, at all, ever, and I still think maybe I’m kinda asexual - like I talked to dad about, remember? - but also I am just sixteen so it could change, but I do know I’m gay, and -”

“Hey, hey, hey.” Sklonda cuts him off gently, a smile spreading onto her face as she reaches over and takes Riz’s hands in her own, stopping his claws from digging into his palm, an anxious habit he hadn’t even realised had kicked in. “Okay. That’s fine. I’m proud of you for figuring it out, sweetie. I’m glad your project was something… normal. I was worried you were off doing some other stupid dangerous Aguefort thing. I’m glad it’s this.”

“Okay.” Riz says, or squeaks, maybe, because he’s remembering how to talk and breathe. “Wait. There’s something else.”

“Yeah?” She says it as if it’s an invitation, and this time, Riz looks at his hands again, rather than into his mother’s wonderfully kind eyes.

“I like Fabian.”

“Oh, no, yeah.” She pats his hands, letting go of them with one to take a sip of too-hot coffee. “Yeah, that tracks.” Riz’s eyes narrow, then widen, then narrow again, the expressions on his face shifting a mile a minute as he works to figure out his reaction to her reaction. “What, honey? I’m a detective too. As soon as you said the word gay, I figured.”

“What?! How! How?”

“I mean, you have his jacket. Are you two…?” She asks.

“He’s not even gay, I don’t think! He gave me his spare jacket as - No! I just realised I’m gay! How would that even work?” His voice rises in pitch with each word spoken, as does the smile grow on Sklonda’s face. She takes another sip of coffee, altogether too pleased.

“Okay! Okay, okay. I hear you.” She says as the mug clinks against the table. “I’m just saying-”

“Nope! Nope. Goodnight, mom.” Riz stands, taking his cup of coffee with him through to his bedroom. He rolls his eyes as he leaves, but the bright smile that threatens to crack his face in two at the sound of his mother’s laughter betrays him. “Love you.”

“Love you too, Riz.”

That night, before Riz falls asleep, he takes a moment to come out to someone else, too. There’s a picture on his desk, next to his mirror. It’s of Pok Gukgak, his father, angel goblin agent badass extraordinaire. There’s a feeling that he should wait until he can get to his dad’s grave to tell him, but… with the tie nearby and the watch on his wrist, staring into the eyes of his father, the picture captured at his parents wedding - he feels like Pok will hear, no matter the location.

“Hey.” He says, to the nobody in his room and to his dad in heaven, all at once. “I, uh. You mighta guessed this already. I think mom did. She didn’t say she had, but I think… Sorry, yeah, no I’m getting distracted. Dad, I’m gay. I figured it out. Or, mainly gay. I don’t know about the ace thing. I’m not worried about that, though. But… yeah. I’m gay. I thought I’d let you know. Love you. Night, Dad.”

(Riz doesn’t know this, then, but Pok hears. There’s an ear to the ground - or, well, the material plane - at all times, for big moments like this. Pok hears, listens intently, with a huge smile on his face. In Heaven, Pok Gukgak says “I’m proud of you, son.”, and attaches the little rainbow button he’s kept in his desk drawer for safekeeping to his shirt.)

Riz falls asleep that night with a smile on his face and a settled feeling in his chest that he thinks is belonging, or knowing, or… something else. Something good. He knows that, for sure.

In due time, Riz comes out. It’s quiet, each time, the same low-key, no stakes way, dropped into conversation as if it’s already an established fact. Reactions are variations upon a positive theme because, well… everyone is gay. Most of Riz’s friends are impressively gay, and he’d run the probabilitiy on that happening if not for Tracker explaining that birds of a feather flock together, and Kristen (who was at that point still crying tears of joy at the fact that Riz came out to her through the simple act of asking when the next GSA meeting was) loudly yelled GAYDAR.

And, to Riz’s mind, the impossible happens, too: he gets his kisses in with Fabian Aramais Seacaster.

Fabian comes out after him, in a trailblazing, dramatic way, a confession and a kiss that’s worthy of a romance movie in the best of ways, because Fabian has never been lowkey for a day in his life.

And, by the age of 17 years old, Riz Gukgak has his very first boyfriend.

The easiest thing about the whole process, surprisingly, after a few harsh months of extreme pining (although, apparently requited, which maybe makes it worse), is the shift from best friends to boyfriends that Riz watches himself and Fabian go through. They talk as usual, fight and bicker like they always have, it’s just… better. And, well. Romantic.

“You know, there was a time I thought I was aromantic.” Riz says out the blue one day, as they spend time together as boyfriends. He might be used to it, but saying it again still kicks off the same feeling of excitement.

He’s laying side by side with Fabian in the boy’s double-king sized bed (really, where do you get those from?) and taking up almost none of the free space. They line up from the shoulders down, his left hand and Fabian’s right interlocked with fingers intertwined, Riz’s shorter frame seemingly compensated for by Fabian hooking his right leg just over Riz’s, as if tying them into a knot, closing the borders of two bodies to merge them into one.

It’s all still so new. It’s all still so scary. It’s all Riz has ever wanted.

“Really, the Ball?” Fabian turns slightly to look at him and Riz does the same, unashamed in thinking that he’s beautiful. There’s still a pang of concern when he wonders what Fabian thinks when he looks at him, in return, but the softness in the boy’s gaze helps that. “I… assume that’s changed?”

“I mean, yeah, Fabian. Considering the… this.” Riz smiles.

“Okay. I’m glad. Not that anything would be wrong of course, if you were aromantic, not that I know too much about it. Kristen teach you?” A pause, in which Riz nods and Fabian breaks into a fond smile. “I should talk to her more about this stuff. When I can.”

“When you can,” Riz parrots, and knows innately that Fabian isn’t meaning when he has the time. “But. Yeah, ages ago. I don’t know. I still don’t know where I lie on the scale of it at all, with the whole kind of not too bothered about sex but not against it thing, too.”

Birds chirping outside in the early morning soundtrack the silence of the conversation and it’s remarkably comfortable for something that feels so big, so taboo. It makes Riz think that maybe if he’d talked about this sooner, thought of it sooner, talked to Fabian sooner, they could have had this happiness a whole lot earlier. It makes him think that the left over red-string on the mystery board of his identity, directed around the word asexual??, isn’t something that needs to be solved just yet, because he’s a person, not a puzzle. Makes him wonder if a few good kisses with the boy of your dreams always makes people think in the metaphorical.

“Well, as long as part of the aromantic is that you want to be in a romantic relationship with me, Riz, I don’t care about the rest.” Fabian chirps up, much like the birds, really, but with an air of bravado and smarminess that Riz now knows to read as hope and love and a bit of being fucking terrified. It’s a wall, he realised, at some point in sophomore year. They’re working on breaking it down.

Riz rolls to his side, breaking the one body into two. Fabian simply decides that it’s unacceptable, rolls over in mimicry and rests a hand on Riz’s side, the other nustling its way under Riz’s head like a pillow, his hand turning to run through thick black hair. Riz practically purrs and has the delightful realisation that Fabian Aramais Seacaster might be clingy.

“You had that a romantic line planned, didn’t you?” He grins at the way Fabian flushes. “Thought so. Dumbass. Of course I want to date you. We are dating. You’re the only person I’ve wanted to date since two weeks into Aguefort and - oh. I wasn’t meant to let that slip.”

“It’s alright.” Fabian grins, and it’s wicked and packed full to the brim with joy. “When I asked Fig how to tell you I was in love with you, Kristen let slip.”

“She what?! Oh my gods. You can’t tell anyone anything in this family - I can’t believe I just called them family.” He huffs a sigh, the sentimentality exposed as he nuzzles his face closer to Fabian, enjoying the feeling of soft fabric and warm skin pressed against his own.

“Well, Fig is related to half of us -”

“As if she’d let me forget that. Why do all our parents insist on dating?”

“- and it’s like what Kristen says. Being gay…” He pauses, nudging Riz as if a line prompter, nudging him again and pressing a kiss to his head (clingy. wonderful.) when he gets no response.

Riz gives in, because… there are worse bribes. “When you’re here you’re family.”

He rolls his eyes as he says it, slow and bemoaning, but he can’t help but let a smile tug at his face. The fact of family is true, undeniably, on more levels than one. Fig is, in fact, through the fact that she has 3 parents, a potential step-sibling to three of them. Even without the label of step-sibling, though, there’s an undeniably homely feeling to being around the other kids. Sure, Fabian is his boyfriend, so that sense of home is different, in a way, but the ones provided by his friends are no less important to him. But even beyond that, now that everyone is out as some form of not-straight, there’s a sense of strong solidarity, like the linking of arms and the marching of feet in pace with one another that fills his heart.

At the last GSA meeting, they’d each worn a pin. Around the room, there were lesbian flags in shades of beautiful pink and orange - orange like Ayda’s fire, like Kristen’s hair; the bisexual flag witht he boldness that Fig and Gorgug deserve; the rainbow flag adorning his and Ragh’s and Fabian’s jackets; an asexual one in the pocket of his own, saved for a later day, if he’s to need it, and Adaine, with her pin holding a wonderful, rainbow question mark. The Bad Kids and their partners and friends are tied together in so many things: good memories and bad ones, laughter and tears, the past and the present and the future.

As Riz thinks back to them in that room, chatting about all of the above, he can’t help but smile wider.

When you’re here, you’re family, and what a wonderful family he has.


End file.
